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A company called Space Roasters says it plans to use the considerable heat of reentry from space through Earth's atmosphere to roast coffee beans. It will then sell them for the perfect cup of joe.

In an interview with Room magazine, the founders of the company, Hatem Alkhafaji and Anders Cavallini, say space is the place to look for a next-level brew. "Coffee has been roasted the same way for centuries now, and as space science has improved many technologies, we believe it is time to revolutionize coffee roasting using space technology," the pair told the magazine.

How does it work? The company says it has patented a "space roasting capsule" in which heat from re-entry will be distributed around four cylinders each containing 75kg of coffee beans. Floating in microgravity, the beans will be evenly heated and roasted during the process. The capsule will then be recovered after landing with parachutes. "The entire process will last only 20 minutes but will end with a marvelous aroma as the hatch is opened," the founders told the magazine.

Although the company says it will offer a "pre-sale" about a month from now, it has not set a price for these coffee beans.

However, given existing launch prices, we might take a guess. The founders mention that they are investigating several launch vehicles, including Rocket Lab's Electron booster and Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle. The latter hasn't posted prices for a suborbital launch, but Rocket Lab has—$6 million per launch.

Space Roasters says its capsule, with coffee beans, would weigh 500kg. The founders envision a 180-km high suborbital trajectory. This seems feasible for the Electron vehicle, although it does not put suborbital information in its Payload User's Guide online.

For the sake of argument, let's assume the company can launch a 500kg capsule into a 180-km suborbital trajectory. Assuming all 300kg of beans are roasted optimally, this comes to $20,000 per kg of roasted beans. There are between 10 and 15 grams of coffee beans in a cup of coffee, so even on the lower end, just for the rocket cost, that is $200 per cup of coffee. Adding in design and development cost of the capsule (which may or may not be reusable), marketing, retrieval, processing, mark-up, and other expenses, space coffee is likely to cost $500 a cup.

Hmmm. Not sure that a capsule that is experiencing enough friction from reentry to heat up, is actually in "microgravity".

That struck me as well. It will be in microgravity at the apogee but it won't be roasting then. It will be roasting during re-entry but the gravity at that point would be very much not micro (3G+). The heat of re-entry is from the deceleration. You are turning kinetic energy into thermal energy. You can't have significant heating without significant deceleration and you can't have microgravity with any significant acceleration.

Thank god! 200yrs from now, when we become a space faring race, we'll at least still have a viable coffee infrastructure. That diner at the edge of the galaxy is no longer a dream. The future looks bright. Now we need space eggs and space bacon.

I see no point to this. You can perfectly control roasting on Earth. In fact we don't because it is more economical to get the roasting "good enough". I could see this working as a novelty but the price will be too high for that. People might pay $20 a cup for "space coffee" at least once to say they did but not $500 a cup. I wouldn't pay $500 a glass for space whiskey.

Thank god! 200yrs from now, when we become a space faring race, we'll at least still have a viable coffee infrastructure. That diner at the edge of the galaxy is no longer a dream. The future looks bright. Now we need space eggs and space bacon.

Man I could really go for some reentry roasted space duck right about now.

I consider myself a bit of a coffee geek but this strikes me as completely absurd. What possible value is there in this other than saying, "from space?" Yes, too cool for school. But does this add any real flavor improvement? I'm betting the answer is "hell no."

I see no point to this. You can perfectly control roasting on Earth. In fact we don't because it is more economical to get the roasting "good enough". I could see this working as a novelty but the price will be too high for that. People might pay $20 a cup for "space coffee" at least once to say they did but not $500 a cup. I wouldn't pay $500 a glass for space whiskey.

Never underestimate some people's desire to show you that they are "better" than you by buying hideously expensive things and showing it off. "Keeping up with the Jones" involves cars, bigger houses. The rich collect apartments in highrises in big cities, art, etc. I can totally see someone born into wealth doing this.

"So I bought some of that space coffee. Fresh batch off the Polaris 87 mission.""Didn't that break up on re-entry and all crew members died?""Yeah." *haughty laughter* "The "died wailing in agony as they were vaporized" gives it a nutty bouquet and excellent mouthfeel."

I see no point to this. You can perfectly control roasting on Earth. In fact we don't because it is more economical to get the roasting "good enough". I could see this working as a novelty but the price will be too high for that. People might pay $20 a cup for "space coffee" at least once to say they did but not $500 a cup. I wouldn't pay $500 a glass for space whiskey.

It is worse than there being no point to this. For 6 million dollars I could almost certainly build you a coffee roaster that could roast small batches of coffee with an extraordinarily high level of precision.

This capsule probably isn't going to be a well regulated environment as you could get on the ground with cheaper equipment. So it will probably be a subpar cup of coffee.

This is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen and, given all that happened last year, that is saying something.

We need a carbon tax to help stop crap like this.

Given the effects of climate change on coffee bean production the last thing we need is to be launching a rocket to roast 300kg of coffee beans.

EDIT: although given the estimated costs, even doubling the price isn't going to deter the ultra-rich from a status symbol like this.

Obligatory reminder that space launches are so rare (compared to ICE cars and airplanes, which are rather common) that they have almost zero impact on carbon emissions.

Well sure, space launches are a very small part of carbon emissions, but so is every individual component of GHG emissions. It’s not one big thing, but hundreds of millions of little things collectively for many years.

How much carbon is emitted, all in, for the average cup of coffee? How much more for a cup of space coffee. I’ll bet a cup of regular coffee that is something like an order of magnitude more.